November 14, 2025 • 10 mins
I spoke with Brandie Knox, the Principal & Creative Director of Knox Design Strategy, a consultancy that partners with law firms on branding, user experience, and user interface design. She is also the Founder & CEO of Moxx, a digital case notebook that helps litigators streamline case preparation and collaboration. We discussed best practices in legal to leverage design to stand out, and how the intersection of design, strategy, and technology is shaping the future of legal practice.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speakingtoday with Brandie Knox, the principal
(00:21):
and creative director of Knox DesignStrategy, a consultancy that partners
with law firms on branding, userexperience, and user interface design.
She is also the founder and CEOof Moxx, a digital case notebook
that helps litigators streamlinecase preparation and collaboration.
(00:41):
Hi Brandie.
How are you?
I'm great, Ari.
Thank you for having me.
I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Tell us about your background andthe genesis of Knox design strategy.
I started my first.
Job in legal marketing at Shermanand Sterling more than 20 years ago.
Now they're now a and o Sherman.
(01:01):
I manage the brand and design teamwithin the marketing and business
development department, and Iwas there for about five years.
And in 2009 I started my own firm.
Specializing in traditionalgraphic design, marketing, comms
for professional services and.
A huge focus in the legal space.
Since then we really pivoted primarilyjust to working on law firms.
(01:22):
We'll get a call every now andthen, from another professional
services, more B2B type, butprimarily we focus on on law firms.
What are some best practices in legal toleverage design effectively to stand out?
The mistake that gets made is sometimesclients or organizations or firms
or whoever start with a vision ofwhat the final product should be.
(01:46):
Whether it's a branding or marketingcommunications material or a product
or a website, and you really don't knowwhat that final thing should be until
you've done the work to figure outthe problem that you're solving for.
So really looking at.
The issues at play, whether it's howyou wanna communicate to a particular
audience, or we have this workflowchallenge that we're trying to solve
(02:09):
internally and we're gonna designour own bespoke product to do that.
We'll come in and work closely withthose key stakeholders and end users.
If it's a branding project,looking at target audience,
figuring out the strategy behind.
How do you wanna approach all that?
What messages do you wanna deliver?
If it's a workflow, what is it now?
(02:31):
What should our ideal situation be?
Then letting that drive thoseoutcomes and it helps you stand out.
You have a good grasp on who you'redesigning for and what you're designing.
Also when you start looking at somethinglike buy-in and stakeholder involvement.
Particularly within a law firmwhere there are many decision makers
and often a lot of processing.
(02:52):
Having all that done, that backgroundwork and that strategy work and being
able to talk about why those decisionswere made and how it might differentiate
from competitors and why this is thebest approach, that groundwork is really
important in making those decisions.
How did your experience working withlaw firms inspire you to create mocks?
(03:17):
Over the years we've started todo more and more product design.
It might be something like anintranet or a firm will call and
say, we have this old system orproduct, or an idea for a new one.
We'll help them figureout what that should be.
So some discovery, ux, ui,and prototyping, and we'll
start to build things out.
(03:37):
Moxx was a similarapproach except we did it.
We did it and it's our productto solve a need that we saw.
And that came about from some workwe did maybe five or six years ago.
We started to work with litigationteams on litigation graphics.
And it was much morethan the graphic aspect.
(03:58):
It was really looking atthe strategy of the case.
If it was a presentation for mediation,you really were storytelling.
You were working alongside the attorneysto decide the key message points?
How do we wanna tell this story?
What's the cadence of the flow?
What types of graphics, what do wewanna communicate with those graphics?
(04:18):
That was the design piece of it.
But in working with them, we reallygot some really deep insight into
their workflow and it was a mess.
It was, a lot of files and foldersand document management systems.
A lot of disparate word documents.
A lot of emails were literally workproduct and who was working on what and
(04:40):
thoughts and ideas were all in email.
So in working with them, we said therehas to be a better way to do this.
We started to do research and prototyping.
We actually went to some CLEs, almostevery year since we started this project,
there has been three or four CLEs onthe Federal Bar Association's website
(05:03):
that covers how to create a digitalcase notebook using Excel Word OneNote.
So there was a real need and westarted prototyping it, but we also
reached out the same as we wouldapproach, say, a project for a client.
We reached out to a number of litigatorsand just said, take us through.
(05:25):
Your workflow and we askedthem very specific questions
and documented how they work.
And they don't all work thesame, but I would say 80% of how
they're doing things is similar.
Even though they all havetheir own way of organizing it.
But looking at those workflows,documenting them, seeing where the pain
points were, where the gaps in simpleproject management but how they're
(05:46):
organizing things and being able toput that into a grid and a diagram of
what that current workflow looks likeand how can we improve upon that in
a way that hopefully improves their,workflow, cuts down on time, makes
collaboration easier and generally justmakes it a more pleasant experience.
(06:12):
What is the response to Moxxand the way that it addresses
some of these challenges?
It's been well received, I would sayparticularly our design first approach
because we're UX, UI designers, soinstead of leading with the technology,
which obviously like the technologyhas gotta be solid in there, but we
started first with the user experience.
(06:35):
Looking at how to make things verystreamlined, very easy, and we're not
trying to be everything to everybody.
We're trying to solve one particularaspect of that litigation workflow
very well, right before we even thinkabout branching out into other areas.
The feedback we've gotten interms of usability and ease
of use has been very positive.
(06:57):
How does Moxx align with eDiscoveryand litigation support tools?
We see this primarily isa post e-discovery tool.
The ability to once you go througheDiscovery, either doing bulk uploads or
connecting with APIs if they're available.
We've really structured any integrationsand, workflows with other tools.
(07:22):
We've structured it so that outsideof our licensing agreements, our
professional services solutionshelp with those integrations.
Much like the work we do, withan intranet or with these bespoke
applications, there's always othertools that you need to collaborate
with, you need to plug into.
We know there'll be a varietyof needs, with firms of how
they're gonna wanna work.
(07:42):
So we'll work with them toexplore what makes the most
sense from their perspective.
How receptive are litigation teamsto using an application like mocks?
They're certainly open to it, but changinghow you do things is difficult and a
lot of that is the same with any of us.
(08:03):
It's not that we don't always likechange, which is sometimes the
issue, but sometimes it's Ugh, Igotta get this thing done and now
I have to go learn something new.
That's why we've really tried tokeep it very simple and easy to use.
And the first and second chair litigatorsare in there, but they're doing less of
the setup and it's more of associates orparalegals who are working more directly.
(08:23):
How do you see the intersectionof design, strategy and technology
shaping the future of legal practice?
I think we'll see design takemore of a strategic position
in how it's being leveraged.
When people think ofdesign, they think of.
Marketing and branding andthe visual piece of it.
(08:46):
But in terms of technology and strategyand how law firms are working, there's
a lot to be said from approaching thoseworkflow problems or structural problems
or how firms are doing things from theperspective of that design thinking.
How can we bring.
(09:06):
People who know the processesand know where they wanna go with
the future state, but, looking todesigners to help figure out how to
fill those gaps and ask questionsand help make those processes better.
Things in technology space are movingso fast, and everyone in house at law
firms are moving a hundred miles aminute trying to stay on top of new
(09:26):
tools, technology, ai, and havingsomeone maybe from the outside who can
help facilitate and ask some of those,not really difficult , but unusual
questions about why don't we approachit this way, can be really valuable.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withBrandie Knox, the principal and
creative director of Knox DesignStrategy, a consultancy that partners
(09:49):
with law firms on branding, userexperience, and user interface design.
She's also the founder and CEOof mocks, a digital case notebook
that helps litigate, streamlinecase preparation and collaboration.
Brandie, thanks so much.
Thank you, Ari.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
(10:10):
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speakingtoday with Brandie Knox, the principal
(00:21):
and creative director of Knox DesignStrategy, a consultancy that partners
with law firms on branding, userexperience, and user interface design.
She is also the founder and CEOof Moxx, a digital case notebook
that helps litigators streamlinecase preparation and collaboration.
(00:41):
Hi Brandie.
How are you?
I'm great, Ari.
Thank you for having me.
I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Tell us about your background andthe genesis of Knox design strategy.
I started my first.
Job in legal marketing at Shermanand Sterling more than 20 years ago.
Now they're now a and o Sherman.
(01:01):
I manage the brand and design teamwithin the marketing and business
development department, and Iwas there for about five years.
And in 2009 I started my own firm.
Specializing in traditionalgraphic design, marketing, comms
for professional services and.
A huge focus in the legal space.
Since then we really pivoted primarilyjust to working on law firms.
(01:22):
We'll get a call every now andthen, from another professional
services, more B2B type, butprimarily we focus on on law firms.
What are some best practices in legal toleverage design effectively to stand out?
The mistake that gets made is sometimesclients or organizations or firms
or whoever start with a vision ofwhat the final product should be.
(01:46):
Whether it's a branding or marketingcommunications material or a product
or a website, and you really don't knowwhat that final thing should be until
you've done the work to figure outthe problem that you're solving for.
So really looking at.
The issues at play, whether it's howyou wanna communicate to a particular
audience, or we have this workflowchallenge that we're trying to solve
(02:09):
internally and we're gonna designour own bespoke product to do that.
We'll come in and work closely withthose key stakeholders and end users.
If it's a branding project,looking at target audience,
figuring out the strategy behind.
How do you wanna approach all that?
What messages do you wanna deliver?
If it's a workflow, what is it now?
(02:31):
What should our ideal situation be?
Then letting that drive thoseoutcomes and it helps you stand out.
You have a good grasp on who you'redesigning for and what you're designing.
Also when you start looking at somethinglike buy-in and stakeholder involvement.
Particularly within a law firmwhere there are many decision makers
and often a lot of processing.
(02:52):
Having all that done, that backgroundwork and that strategy work and being
able to talk about why those decisionswere made and how it might differentiate
from competitors and why this is thebest approach, that groundwork is really
important in making those decisions.
How did your experience working withlaw firms inspire you to create mocks?
(03:17):
Over the years we've started todo more and more product design.
It might be something like anintranet or a firm will call and
say, we have this old system orproduct, or an idea for a new one.
We'll help them figureout what that should be.
So some discovery, ux, ui,and prototyping, and we'll
start to build things out.
(03:37):
Moxx was a similarapproach except we did it.
We did it and it's our productto solve a need that we saw.
And that came about from some workwe did maybe five or six years ago.
We started to work with litigationteams on litigation graphics.
And it was much morethan the graphic aspect.
(03:58):
It was really looking atthe strategy of the case.
If it was a presentation for mediation,you really were storytelling.
You were working alongside the attorneysto decide the key message points?
How do we wanna tell this story?
What's the cadence of the flow?
What types of graphics, what do wewanna communicate with those graphics?
(04:18):
That was the design piece of it.
But in working with them, we reallygot some really deep insight into
their workflow and it was a mess.
It was, a lot of files and foldersand document management systems.
A lot of disparate word documents.
A lot of emails were literally workproduct and who was working on what and
(04:40):
thoughts and ideas were all in email.
So in working with them, we said therehas to be a better way to do this.
We started to do research and prototyping.
We actually went to some CLEs, almostevery year since we started this project,
there has been three or four CLEs onthe Federal Bar Association's website
(05:03):
that covers how to create a digitalcase notebook using Excel Word OneNote.
So there was a real need and westarted prototyping it, but we also
reached out the same as we wouldapproach, say, a project for a client.
We reached out to a number of litigatorsand just said, take us through.
(05:25):
Your workflow and we askedthem very specific questions
and documented how they work.
And they don't all work thesame, but I would say 80% of how
they're doing things is similar.
Even though they all havetheir own way of organizing it.
But looking at those workflows,documenting them, seeing where the pain
points were, where the gaps in simpleproject management but how they're
(05:46):
organizing things and being able toput that into a grid and a diagram of
what that current workflow looks likeand how can we improve upon that in
a way that hopefully improves their,workflow, cuts down on time, makes
collaboration easier and generally justmakes it a more pleasant experience.
(06:12):
What is the response to Moxxand the way that it addresses
some of these challenges?
It's been well received, I would sayparticularly our design first approach
because we're UX, UI designers, soinstead of leading with the technology,
which obviously like the technologyhas gotta be solid in there, but we
started first with the user experience.
(06:35):
Looking at how to make things verystreamlined, very easy, and we're not
trying to be everything to everybody.
We're trying to solve one particularaspect of that litigation workflow
very well, right before we even thinkabout branching out into other areas.
The feedback we've gotten interms of usability and ease
of use has been very positive.
(06:57):
How does Moxx align with eDiscoveryand litigation support tools?
We see this primarily isa post e-discovery tool.
The ability to once you go througheDiscovery, either doing bulk uploads or
connecting with APIs if they're available.
We've really structured any integrationsand, workflows with other tools.
(07:22):
We've structured it so that outsideof our licensing agreements, our
professional services solutionshelp with those integrations.
Much like the work we do, withan intranet or with these bespoke
applications, there's always othertools that you need to collaborate
with, you need to plug into.
We know there'll be a varietyof needs, with firms of how
they're gonna wanna work.
(07:42):
So we'll work with them toexplore what makes the most
sense from their perspective.
How receptive are litigation teamsto using an application like mocks?
They're certainly open to it, but changinghow you do things is difficult and a
lot of that is the same with any of us.
(08:03):
It's not that we don't always likechange, which is sometimes the
issue, but sometimes it's Ugh, Igotta get this thing done and now
I have to go learn something new.
That's why we've really tried tokeep it very simple and easy to use.
And the first and second chair litigatorsare in there, but they're doing less of
the setup and it's more of associates orparalegals who are working more directly.
(08:23):
How do you see the intersectionof design, strategy and technology
shaping the future of legal practice?
I think we'll see design takemore of a strategic position
in how it's being leveraged.
When people think ofdesign, they think of.
Marketing and branding andthe visual piece of it.
(08:46):
But in terms of technology and strategyand how law firms are working, there's
a lot to be said from approaching thoseworkflow problems or structural problems
or how firms are doing things from theperspective of that design thinking.
How can we bring.
(09:06):
People who know the processesand know where they wanna go with
the future state, but, looking todesigners to help figure out how to
fill those gaps and ask questionsand help make those processes better.
Things in technology space are movingso fast, and everyone in house at law
firms are moving a hundred miles aminute trying to stay on top of new
(09:26):
tools, technology, ai, and havingsomeone maybe from the outside who can
help facilitate and ask some of those,not really difficult , but unusual
questions about why don't we approachit this way, can be really valuable.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withBrandie Knox, the principal and
creative director of Knox DesignStrategy, a consultancy that partners
(09:49):
with law firms on branding, userexperience, and user interface design.
She's also the founder and CEOof mocks, a digital case notebook
that helps litigate, streamlinecase preparation and collaboration.
Brandie, thanks so much.
Thank you, Ari.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
(10:10):
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
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